At the 2024 Diamond League Finals in Brussels, the world was fortunate enough to witness three of the fastest 800m runners in history take the track together on Sept. 14. 

Anytime Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati, Canada’s Marco Arop or Kenya’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi appear on the start list, whispers of a world record enter the conversation. Rightfully so, as they are the fifth, fourth and third fastest 800m runners in history, respectively.

Arop was a frontrunner for the entire Diamond League Final race, attempting to match the world record pace before Sedjati muscled past him with less than 100m to go. Of course, Wanyonyi came from seemingly nowhere to pass both Arop and Sedjati for the gold in 1:42.69.

David Rudisha’s 800m world record of 1:40.91 has been held for 12 years since he set it at the 2012 London Olympics. Although, just because Rudisha’s world record seems due to fall does not mean it should be underestimated.

So who’s closest?

Of the three challenging the record at present, Wanyonyi has been the closest to running the world record. This summer, he ran 1:41.19 on Aug. 10 and 1:41.11 on Aug. 22. Consistency is threatening to world records and he’s inched himself within 0.20 seconds of Rudisha’s time. Mind you, Wanyonyi turned 20 years old on Aug. 20, giving him the largest career window to make history.

Arop is not far behind with a best time of 1:41.20, which he ran on Aug. 10 at the Paris Olympics, losing to Wanyonyi in the final sprint by a hair. Coming second to Wanyonyi again on Aug. 22 with a time of 1:41.72, he kept himself within striking distance of the record. At 26 years old, Arop should be in his prime.

Sedjati’s best time is 1:41.46, further behind but certainly not out of the conversation. Before Wanyonyi snuck past him at the line, Sedjati looked poised to win the Diamond League Final. With a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics, his competitive spirit makes him a constant threat, especially if he can find a way to beat Wanyonyi.

Canada’s Rudisha?

One advantage for Arop is that his running style and strategy parallels Rudisha’s. With both runners standing at a towering six foot three, they dominate competition with long, powerful strides.

At the Diamond League, Arop took a confident lead in lap one with a smooth and unrelenting pace. Arop stretched his lead with three hundred meters to go, a strategy Rudisha employed 12 years prior when he set the world record for the last time.

It wasn’t until the final bend that Arop lost hold of the pacing wavelight and fell to third place.

Rudisha was never the fastest in the final stretch, with Botswana’s Nijel Amos making up a few meters at London 2012. What made the difference over Arop’s run was Rudisha’s aggressive attack of the back straight and his ability to ride as much momentum as he could around the last bend and through the finish line. 

It’s no stretch to imagine that Arop could win against Wanyonyi and challenge Rudisha’s record if he can find a way to better hold onto his momentum through the last two hundred meters. 

The issue of splits

When he set the world record in 2012, Rudisha ran a 49.28 second first lap, followed by 51.63 second lap.

At this year’s Diamond League, Arop led the pack through the first lap in a perfectly identical 49.28 seconds.

The wavelight used at the Diamond League Final matched Rudisha’s laps exactly, meaning Arop was not following an even split, but a fast first lap.

To run Rudisha’s world record with an even split, the equal laps would have to be covered in 50.46 seconds. Many argue the 800m is most efficiently run at an even split, but all recent world records were set with a slower second lap.

What might be the fastest negative split ever run was by Denmark’s Wilson Kipketer, who ran 52.3 seconds for his first lap and then 50.5 seconds for his second in Monaco in 1997. His time was 1:42.77, over a second slower than his own world record at the time which he set just three days earlier.

Who knew two laps of a track could get so complicated?

Is the 800m due for a new record?

The 800m is a strange event in terms of world record progression. Since 1976, the men’s 800m world record has been held only by four athletes but broken ten times over that same span. In those recent decades, records have stood for years at a time, only to be broken multiple times in a short period of time by a new dominant force of the sport.

Kipketer is the epitome of this phenomenon. For a 16 year span from 1981 until 1997, Great Britain’s Sebastian Coe’s second world record in two years, a time of 1:41.73 seemed unbeatable. That was before Kipketer equalled Coe’s record in July of 1997 and then broke it twice in August. Kipketer ran three different world records in just two months that summer, and then never again.

Kipketer’s third record of 1:41.11 stood for 13 years, minus two days, until Rudisha ran 1:41.09 at the ISTAF World Challenge meeting in Berlin, Germany. Following in Kipketer’s footsteps, Rudisha would break his own record twice more. The first of which was only a week later in Italy where he ran 1:41.01. His third and last was two years later in London, where Rudisha was the first and last man to break the 101 second barrier for 12 years and counting.

Even stranger than the men’s record, the women’s 800m world record is the oldest living track and field record, set by Jarmila Kratochvílová in 1983. For a better idea of the interminability of this record, Kratochvílová’s time of 1:53.28 has outlived both Czechoslovakia, the country she represented at the 1983 IAAF World Championships in Munich, and West Germany, the country in which those championships were held.

The women’s world record deserves an article of its own. The reality is no one is anywhere near breaking this record. In fact, nobody in the 2020s has come within a second. Despite her critics’ accusations of doping, Kratochvílová has never been linked a Czechoslovakian doping program, and so the accusations live on as a symptom of what may have been an unlikely, but legitimate, performance.

What’s next?

Wanyonyi is likely the closest to Rudisha’s record. The youngster has lots of potential and plenty of time to do it, so there should be no surprise if he holds the world record by the end of his career. But he’s going to need to contend with Arop and Sedjati who still have time and an unrelenting desire to make their mark on the sport.

With a break to prepare for the next big opportunity on the track, these athletes will have a chance to make the tweaks necessary to potentially set a new world record in the new year.